Watching Higher Education/Observando a Educação Superior

Long range thinking

May 7, 2011

Well, not really long range thinking, just some musings over things you should do (or not) on the net.

Let’s say that you are just trying to do something that you didn’t do before. Like charging some YouTube videos (well, the audio in fact) on your MP3 player to listen to during a trip. How do you do it?

Guess what: there is this wonderful tool called Google (I bet you never heard of it before, but that’s beside the point, ;-)) and “ask” for a method to do it. Of course, a few of them pop up immediately because someone, somewhere, already did it and decided to load the method in some obscure page that Google bots can index (and sometimes even “throw” a video of the procedure into YouTube).

You stop, and think for a bit: why should someone do this? Exactly, the point is that a procedure was there, at hand, when you needed it. As there are procedures to convert the YouTube video format (.flv as a matter of fact) into the right format for your player.

The point of the musings is this: whenever you do something that you think is very simple (for you), think about someone, somewhere, that may be a newbie in the Internet (or that is just trying to do something different for others, like an OER (Open Educational Resource)). Could be that is just your contribution (that is, if you decide to put it online) that shows up in the top of the Google page, lowering the costs in time of the person that is trying to do something new. And, in the long run, it could even happen that this same person you may have helped out will be the one helping you.